At the end of February, Food & Wine brought me and the other Best New Pastry Chefs to New York for a photo shoot. I’d love to play it cool, “Oh yeah, no bigs. Just a thing we did.” But I spend 90% of my life working without make-up, hair pulled into a bun, dusted in flour and scrubbing my own dishes in a windowless basement. So sittin’ around while people attended to my hair and make-up kinda totally rocked. The only thing I had to do all day? Smile. The particulars of the shoot remain Top Secret until the May issue comes out but, suffice it to say, we played with our food.

I also ate a lot of food, from a parade of pastries at Corton, a treat from fellow BNPCShawn Gawle, to masa ice cream at Empellon Cocina. I went to a million tiny bakeries and candy shops and everywhere in between. But, as befitting the girl known for Fauxreos and Pop-Tarts, the one dessert I can’t get out of my mind: a slice of cake.

It came served on a bed of chocolate cookie crumbs, unapologetically showered with rainbow sprinkles and an obligatory cherry on top. It had neatly combed white-whip for frosting and three layers of colorful gelato inside. Simply the most joyful dessert I’d seen in a long time.

I know I should come back from New York, newly minted as one of America’s best new pastry chefs, ready to show off something impossibly fancy. But instead, I’ve come back in a cozy, layer cake sort of mood. Knowing spring berries will start showing up in my kitchen any day, I wanted one last heavy duty chocolate dessert before I start to lighten things up with shortcakes and fruit tarts.

German chocolate is, without question, the heaviest of all chocolate cakes. Heavy flavors, heavy textures, so loaded with chocolate and nuts it’s psychically heavy. Now, conceptually I love everything about it. Coconut, pecans, caramel and chocolate are all landmarks on the road to Yum Town. But no matter the deliciocity contained within, German chocolate always reminds me of dirty shag carpet from the neighbor’s basement.

Nothing illustrates this truth better than the story of the day Rosco’s little nephew saw a German chocolate cake for the first time. The little tyke had earned the great privilege of putting the birthday candles on Rosco’s birthday cake. He anticipated this activity with excitement for an entire family-filled weekend. When the day finally came for him to perform his duties, he opened the cake box and literally burst into tears, wailing, “It’s barf cake!” He dropped the candles and fled the scene, crying. True story.

No one would call German chocolate an acquired taste. It’s an acquired sight. Why does it have to be so damned ugly? Well, because the ugly part defines its allure, that chewy, nibby, nutty, crunchy textured filling. Get rid of that and you’ve just got chocolate cake. Unless…

Unless you could have a German chocolate chocolate cake. Kind of pastry koan, think about it for a minute. A chocolate cake with all the flavors and textures of “German chocolate” built in. No shag required.

To accomplish this, I made a flourless chocolate cake with roasted pecans and coconut replacing most of the flour and giving it a nibby crunch. Pecan oil instead of butter ups the pecan flavor while coconut milk instead of buttermilk does the same for coconut. Caramel buttercream delivers the caramely flavor of the original in its purest form, but a extra drizzle of caramel at the end should satisfy those craving that gooey, sticky element.

Is it a German chocolate cake? No. It’s a German chocolate chocolate cake.

48 comments and counting

I love you. I really do. And because of that I’ve got to insist that you stop calling it “German Chocolate Cake”. It’s actually “German’s Chocolate Cake” – it owes its name to American Sam German, who developed a brand of dark baking chocolate used for the cake (German’s Chocolate, naturally). The omission of the ‘s is crazymaking for me.

· Erin ·

Mar 13, 2012 · 10:05 PM

@blog is the new black, aw yay! Thanks so much.

@emily, lol.

@Erin, well, you can let the crazy making officially come to an end. The cake is properly known as German chocolate cake nowadays. I know all about Sam German and his history at Baker’s but language is fluid and due to over half a century of omitting the ‘s, the name change is official, unless of course you use a recipe made with German’s chocolate or the official recipe from Baker’s, which holds to its own naming convention.

But, even more intriguingly, the name “German Chocolate Cake” used to describe a chocolate layer cake with coconut and a cooked milk filling dates back to the 19th century. The true story of German’s Chocolate Cake and German Chocolate Cake is a rather long and complicated one that I’m actually in the midst of researching heavily. Someday I’ll be able to share my findings! xoxo

I love that you know so much about the cake itself. Your blog is the bestest! I’ve been working up the courage to make a German Chocolate Cake to post, but the thought of photographing it is so scary that it’s been a slow-going process. As such, this recipe intrigues me. There are so many things I have bookmarked from your site already, but this is now on the list! It looks beautiful and I love the poor kid’s reaction to its homelier inspiration.

Lol I was confused when I read about German chocolate and a little bit offended (being German) about the negative remarks until I read “barf cake” which made me laugh. That was until I read the other comments about Sam German. Ah…makes more sense because German chocolate is wonderful and tasty (and won’t make you barf unless you eat too much of it); beautiful cake!

@Kaitlin, yeah, I mean there’s just no way to make a traditional GCC look good. Do a google search for it and switch to images only. shudder

@Mardi, I know, me too! I am so anxious to see how it all turned out, it was very…intriguing.

@Jessica, I don’t know what you’d call this, like an inside-inside GCC?

@Samantha, recipe coming soon, I promise.

@Jen, oh no! I refrained from telling the story because it seems like every single post for German chocolate cake starts out with that story, and I just didn’t want to rehash it another time. I didn’t think about those who hadn’t been exposed to it already. I’m glad @Erin brought it up!

@Choc Chip Uru, nothing but practice! I’ve got crazy cake triceps.

@Viviane, have you ever seen the traditional version? The flavors are all here, but really, if you haven’t seen one you owe yourself a google.

I’ve wanted to comment on your posts so many times but something about your ridiculously cool sweets makes me want to use a string of expletives…in a good way. Like holy blank that cake is so badword, badword awesome. Wash my mouth out with rainbow sprinkles, please!

I can’t wait for the recipe. The caramel buttercream looks amazing. How many times did you make this with your substitutions, i.e. pecan oil etc. until it turned out as you wanted it? Yummmmmmmmmmmm. Thank you for a wonderful blog.

So so funny about the barf cake. And it does kind of look like that nasty 70s shag. Maybe even barf on that nasty shag. But I’ll take a slice of homemade German Chocolate Cake any old day. My #1 favorite cake of all time.

If I wasn’t perpetually on a diet I would love to try your variation. Congrats on your accomplishment, too. That’s really cool. You deserve it.

· Annie ·

Mar 15, 2012 · 11:10 AM

2007 marked the 50th anniversary of the German chocolate cake, which is certainly chocolate —and coconut and pecan — but is decidedly not German. The name comes from Sam German — who was either an American or an Englishman, depending on what you read.

In 1852, he invented a style of sweet baking chocolate for the Baker’s chocolate company. The company named it after him, but “German’s Chocolate” didn’t become well-known until 1957. That’s when a Texas homemaker sent her now-legendary cake recipe to a Dallas newspaper.

The recipe was so popular that German’s Chocolate sales shot up 73 percent in one year. Newspapers across the country reprinted the recipe.But somewhere along the way, German’s Chocolate Cake lost its apostrophe-s, leaving Germany holding the credit for a classic American dessert.

I just want to thank you for sharing your talent with all of us. I am so glad that I found your blog.

· mona ·

Mar 15, 2012 · 11:28 AM

Stella you totally ROCK! Love your site and your style..and I look forward to the recipe for this beauty

…ironically, the “barf cake” was mentioned by my sister just last Friday!

And, just for the record (and for the information of your readers), this still holds both the title of best German chocolate cake that I have ever had AND second-best birthday cake of my life. When you sent me that first image to tell me this was posted, I could almost taste it.

Definitely one of my favorite recipes from you, Stella. Thanks for bringing this one into my world!

Confession: I had never heard of German Chocolate Cake before. But yours looked so beautiful, and your description of the traditional cake made me laugh, so I googled it. Holy baloney, you were right. It DOES look like a “barf cake”!

But yours is gorgeous, I love the flavor combinations— definitely a cake to try.

@The Cozy Herbivore, ahh! Really, you’d never heard of it? Haha, yeah, a google image search would be a shocking introduction. It really is a delicious cake, just not gonna win any beauty pageants. Thank you for the kind words. Cheers!

My sisters and I had a similar indecent 2 years ago,we made our dad a GCC for his birthday because that’s what he wanted and so we obliged. At the time there were 5 grandchildren between the 3 of us siblings and needless to say they none of them were at all happy with his choice of birthday cake and much complaining ensued, which led to my niece declaring to my father that he was no longer allowed to pick his own birthday cakes anymore because he picked gross cakes ! I really thought maybe it was only our families littlest members took issues with GCC ! Clearly its just kids in general ! LOL

· Jesyca ·

Apr 29, 2012 · 4:20 PM

@Jesyca, ha! You are not alone. I wonder if part of it is textural. Kids are really picky about texture, which GCC has in spades. And…well…the way it looks too.

I cannot stop laughing at ‘barf cake’ — it never actually occurred to me that they were ugly, though once I’ve seen it I don’t think I can unsee it. Poor little kid! I can just picture the sad little face!

· Sarvi ·

Sep 07, 2013 · 11:18 PM

haha, right?! I never thought of it that way either. From the mouths of babes…